


remember weather by the voice of the wheel

by feralphoenix



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Autistic Frisk, Hanukkah, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Nonverbal Frisk, Other, Past Child Abuse, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spoilers - Undertale Pacifist Route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 16:17:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9131962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: The end of the year is not quite living up to its promise, and Asriel is feeling a little...spiteful.(This is, astoundingly, less ominous than it sounds.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> _(owing no explanations_ – let it be without thorns)
> 
> this is a story that is, in large part, about microaggressions and large-scale discrimination, so if you don't want to read about antisemitism i'd turn back if i were you. there's also a brief nightmare sequence that involves violent/disturbing imagery (violent intrusive thoughts, self-harm, dismemberment, and dpdr) because all these kids are still trying to process and cope with a lot of severe trauma.

Frisk waves their hands until Chara looks over at the two of you from all the way in the living room.

 _Come sing the blessing,_ they sign over their head, as if to be as clear as possible.

Chara slouches down on the sofa, frowning. “Why can’t you do it?”

 _Because my vocal cords are all messed up from how little I talk and I have a range of maybe five notes,_ Frisk signs back, sticking their tongue out. _You’re our only hope._

Chara sighs so heavily they slump backwards, then pulls themself up with a disgruntled _“Fine”_ and minces over to join you and Frisk in the kitchen. But they don’t join the two of you at the window; they hang back instead in the elbow of the counters, hands crammed into their pockets, looking at you from the corner of their eye.

They flinch when Frisk strikes the match and sets it to the top candle in the lone high branch of the nine-antlered candle holder. Frisk blows out the match and sets it on the wax paper underneath; the smoke itches at your nose, cloying, and you wrinkle your muzzle in an effort not to sneeze. Frisk picks up the candle, but they don’t light the other ones; they look back over their shoulder at Chara, who’s still cowering uncharacteristically.

You expect them to get mutinous, but they just sort of mumble-sing the words under their breath, letting Frisk get on with the ritual. You can’t understand any of the Hebrew; the words are throaty and strange but seem natural from Chara’s mouth regardless.

They fall silent after a soft _amen._ Frisk gently pushes past you and crosses the kitchen to stand beside them, fishing Chara’s hand out of their pocket to weave their own fingers through Chara’s.

Whatever expectations you had about celebrating Hanukkah together, this is nothing like any of them.

 

 

A long time ago, back when it was just you and Chara and your parents in the castle, they told you stories of all their big holidays, stories that kept you holding your breath and sitting on the edge of your seat. The ones about Hanukkah were some of the coolest: Guerilla-style resistance to an invading regime, people holding to their beliefs in the face of death and tragedy, secret assassinations, signs of divine approval. When you told them how awesome it all was, they blushed and looked shy and proud and agreed.

You’d hoped that them being able to celebrate their holidays and having Frisk to celebrate them with would be something nice for Chara, something to help them cope with living on the surface with so many humans everywhere, but the reality of things isn’t so kind. The nearest temple for their religion is another town over, and all the supplies that they and Frisk need have to be bought either online or diligently hunted for in that other town. Last year they got so mad and scared they cried when Frisk insisted on putting the candles in the window like they’re apparently supposed to, and Frisk had to persuade them for an hour to get them to calm down, insisting that things like egged driveways and bricks through windows and people going to the bathroom on your front step hardly ever happens anymore.

You started to feel funny and sick halfway through that, and had to look elsewhere so that you couldn’t see what they were saying anymore.

Maybe it’s just one of those human things that you’re never really going to get. Like, for instance, the present Frisk got Chara for their birthday a few months ago: A t-shirt that they got custom-printed with the text “Schrodinger’s White Person” on the front, which made Chara laugh until they cried. You demanded to be let in on the joke, but the jumbled explanation that Frisk and Chara gave made no sense whatsoever and wasn’t funny at all, not even in the mean-funny way that you would’ve shoveled down with gusto when you were a flower.

Maybe it has to do with how you know, now, that some of the shiny stripes on Chara’s arms are burn scars instead of old cuts.

There’s a difference between knowing that years of pain can’t be healed by waving your hands and casting a spell and actually seeing that fact demonstrated, you guess.

 

 

Three days into Hanukkah, you hit the bottom of your box of special candles, and your mom decrees that a trip over to the next town will cost less than express shipping, so you and Frisk and your mom pile into the car. Chara stays home, like they usually do unless their presence is absolutely required; Mom calls Undyne and Alphys over to stay with them. Leaving Chara to their own devices can be a little unpredictable—sometimes they’re just fine and pass the time playing video games or reading or drawing, but sometimes you’ll walk back in on them having an anxiety attack or they’ll be awkwardly concealing small wounds. They do better with friends or family around.

It’s an hour-long drive there; you and Frisk play rock paper scissors to decide who gets to sit in shotgun on the way. They beat you soundly even two out of three, so you sit in the back and alternately text Chara and stare out the window at the scenery whizzing past.

Frisk doesn’t get discouraged when the first two convenience stores don’t have anything, though by now your mother is frowning a little in the way that only shows between her eyebrows and not on her mouth at all. There’s an entire section of Target dedicated to Christmas, blaring jewel tones of red and green and gold and sparkling white, a huge display of larger-than-life pine trees strung with hundreds of little baubles in every imaginable design. There’s a time when you would have collected those shiny plastic balls just to have them, just to enjoy the sensation of having a hoard that increases, just to distract yourself from boredom and give yourself a hollow sense of superiority. The storewide speakers play you songs about Santa Claus and a reindeer named Rudolph and a snowman that could be the cousin of that one from Snowdin. Sprinkled in between are songs about Jesus, and even though you don’t really get the context of Jesus, you still make a face to yourself imagining how much Chara would hate hearing them. Frisk just keeps walking, serene.

You walk past a single aisle filled with red and green and black decorations that according to the overhead sign are for celebrating something called Kwanzaa, and then past it, hidden away awkwardly like a housewarming gift nobody likes but would feel guilty for getting rid of entirely, there’s an aisle all done up in blue and silver. You roll your locket between your fingers and let your breath out, glad you can bring _something_ back home to Chara before sunset.

(Your mother is still frowning.)

Frisk pauses halfway down the aisle and claps their hands, picking up a long blue box and holding it out to you to examine, giggling.

“Chocolate Maccabees,” you read aloud, nonplussed. There’s a plastic window that shows you the individual chocolate figures, wrapped in foil with bad cartoon renderings of the historic rebels on them.

Frisk hands it off to you. _We need to take a selfie with this and show Chara, they’ll think it’s hilarious._

“Have you found a gift for Chara, my children?” your mother asks, leaning over to see.

 _“Can_ we get it for them?” you ask, craning your head back to look her in the face. (Your ears flip inside out, and you hand the chocolates back to Frisk to push them back over.) “Don’t you always say that since you and Frisk bake so much anyway, we don’t need to buy extra candy?”

“This _is_ a special occasion, my dear,” she replies, looking so amused that you have to force yourself not to sulk. “I believe I will allow it because of that.”

 _They’re dark chocolate too, it’s perfect,_ Frisk says, beaming. _We HAVE to get them._

Your mother chuckles and ruffles their hair, then yours. “All right, then. Let us pick out candles so that we may hurry home, my children.”

Frisk’s the one who approves a candle brand, so you fill your arms with three boxes since they’re still carrying the chocolates. “Is there anything else we need?” you ask your mom.

The frown returns to between her eyes, but her mouth smiles. “Not this time, I think,” she says. “I do believe I am quite done here.”

Frisk sits in the back on the drive home, and you watch the beautiful golds and pinks and purples of the sky and clouds as the sun sinks and the street lights begin to flicker on. The sensation of flying down the highway is really great—you _love_ riding along with your parents or with Papyrus, it really brings home how big the surface is and how you really are _free_ after all those timelines—but today you just keep thinking about Chara, and about how little things have changed over the past hundred years.

 

 

“And lo, the oil in the temple only _just_ lasted until the party returned with new oil to keep the sacred flames lit,” Chara says with a flourish as you and Frisk and Mom open the door. The lights are on in the living room, and you can hear Undyne and Alphys’ voices, so they must have come when they heard the garage door. “You guys only _just_ made it.”

 “We did the best we could within the constraints of the speed limit, my child,” your mother replies. “But I am relieved that we arrived in time. Frisk, please get things set up so that we may begin the ceremony.”

You worry for a minute when Undyne and Alphys join you for the lighting of the hanukiah, but Chara just holds your hand tightly and closes their eyes, their cheeks and ears red as they sing but their voice high and proud and clear.

They peel potatoes while Frisk grates the finished ones into a bowl and your mother gathers other ingredients, and you play cards with Undyne and Alphys. Dinner is lively with all six of you crowded around the table, and Chara shrieks a little with delight when you and Frisk reveal the Chocolate Maccabees in all their glory, and for a couple of hours things are okay, better than okay.

 

 

That night when you sleep you have the usual nightmare: The clamoring in your head is so loud, and you give in to it, making blades of your magic and sawing them through where your legs join your torso. There’s no pain, no blood, not even any dust when they come off—they just go cartoonish and obviously fake, unraveling into puffs of cotton and wishes like they belonged on a stuffed animal instead of a living monster. There’s a wormlike wriggling at the ends of your nerves as they turn into roots and take the place of the legs-that-were-never-yours. You reach into your own chest, flesh parting harmlessly like stuffing, and pull your soul out, obsessively picking away the grace given to you by the monsters of the underground. Like picking all the meat out of your favorite surface food, crab cakes, until all that’s left is breadcrumb glop and bits of carrot. What remains of your soul collapses, and your Boss Monster body winks out like a hologram, and there you are rooted to the ground.

In your dream you see Frisk and Chara rushing toward you with concern and underneath your blank apathy you can feel yawning craters open up where your love for them used to go, but you don’t get to the part of the nightmare where you murder them slowly and violently and laugh while they ask you _why_ because it’s just so _entertaining._

This is because screaming from across the room wakes you up.

You sit upright before you even know where you are, before you can even shake off the weird numbness of your old Flowey nightmares, because _that’s Chara’s voice,_ and Chara only screams like that when something has affected them so badly that they forget where and when they are.

The dimmer-switch lights go on and illuminate the room just enough for you to see Frisk climbing down the ladder from the top bunk. Chara’s not thrashing under their sheets but they _are_ shrieking, a cacophonous mess that you can only discern garbled phrases from: _Dad no daddy no please why it hurts stop it no_ and _Mom mommy help me why stop him why mom why FUCK YOU FUCK YOU WHY ARE YOU JUST STANDING THERE HE IS GOING TO KILL ME_ and Chara is back to howling like they’re being set on fire.

You remember that your own simile is probably literal and feel cold in the pit of your stomach and make for the knot of their body under their blankets, but Frisk grabs you by the back of the pajamas and hauls you back with more strength than you thought their skinny human arms had.

 _You can’t,_ they sign as they stand in your way, bodily blocking you from reaching Chara. _They’re panicking and scared and angry and if they lash out at you right now you could get really, really hurt._

Your mouth pops open and you almost protest that you wouldn’t mind, that it’s Chara and even if they hurt you, under the circumstances that would be fine, but Frisk’s face is fierce with determination and you realize belatedly that Frisk and Chara would not at all be fine with you getting hurt. You shut your mouth and stop trying to shove past Frisk.

They go in to shake the blanket mound, and a fist arcs out from beneath, catching them full in the face with a smack so loud you flinch. Frisk staggers a little but doesn’t give up, shelling the covers from Chara’s body and dodging a kicking foot and a slap to pull them upright and hold them close.

You figure that’s your cue, and sit on the mattress next to your human friends; you press your hand very softly to Chara’s face, first the back, then the pad. The sensations of your clearly non-human body against their skin usually help remind them that they’re out of their blood parents’ reach for good: Now, too, their shouts die down and subside, leaving them breathing hard and rocking in Frisk’s grip instead.

“You’re okay,” you manage. “It’s been about a year and a half since the Barrier broke. They’re gone. They can’t hurt you anymore. You’re okay. You’re with me and Frisk and Mom now. We’re all okay.”

It takes a couple of minutes, but eventually they sag against your and Frisk’s touch, exhausted and pliant with that exhaustion. They inhale long and rattly, then let their breath out in a soft _whuff._ “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” you say, casting your hand along the curve of their spine. “You were freaking out. It’s not really your fault.”

Chara sighs again. “Hate this. Know it’ll stop in a couple of days. Still hate it.”

The three of you scoot back against the wall, sitting up side by side, your hand in Chara’s and their other one in Frisk’s. In the low light you can see Frisk’s cheek coming up red, so you stretch out across Chara’s lap to heal them; Chara squeezes your hand and then theirs, silent.

You rest your head against their shoulder and stare at the far wall, idly kneading at your thigh. Pushing your claws down hurts; massaging your muscles feels nice. It’s your leg, and it really is attached and part of you, not a prosthetic or a foreign body there to make you up into a Boss Monster like a weed having caught the attention of Cinderella’s fairy godmother.

 

 

(When you wake up you’ve got a crick in your neck, but at least nobody woke screaming from any more nightmares.)

 

 

 _Aren’t you supposed to give people presents on Hanukkah?_ you text Frisk behind Chara’s back while they read.

From across the room, Frisk shrugs a little. _u can but its not like its traditional or anyth??? like im p sure that just started bcos jewish kids felt left out while everybody else was getting xmas gifts and stuff_

_But you still CAN, right???_

Frisk makes a thumbs up. _ya usually its just little stuff. whoof want to know???_

 _It’s just, everyone’s been all miserable and it’s been weird, and I want to fix that if I can._ You scrunch your mouth to one side and scratch at the curve of your ear. _Is that, idk, not my place to do??_

 _no omg thats a great idea,_ Frisk replies right away. _& i think I kno JUST the way to help ;)_

 

 

They invite themself over to your dad’s place next afternoon, winking even more than Aaron when you and Chara try to ply them as to what’s up. Even as the door is closing behind them Chara’s already turning to you with confusion and gesturing after them, and you just shrug because even if you’ve got a general idea, that still doesn’t mean you could produce the specifics to placate them.

While Chara and your mom are doing laundry, you hunker down on the sofa and search “Hanukkah gifts” on your phone for inspiration. You can’t tell whether some of these are good ideas, and you have to scroll past some stuff that even you with your limited understanding of human culture can understand is offensive, but you do eventually come upon one and text the link to yourself for later perusal.

You’re not old enough to buy things online yet, so you pull your mother aside late at night when Chara is in the shower and Frisk is upstairs. “I can pay you back for these later, I think,” you say quietly just in case, “but Frisk and Chara have been really miserable this year and I want us to have some _nice_ memories of the holidays too, dang it.”

She doesn’t chastise you for saying “dang”; she just lifts your phone to give it a look herself, producing her reading glasses to appraise the pages more closely.

“This is very thoughtful of you, my son,” she says at last. “I would be happy to help procure these gifts. And—because I know that they are quite expensive—I would also be happy to negotiate a few extra chores in place of part of the price, if you would like.”

There were several timelines when you had the entire supply of gold in the underground to yourself. While in many ways you’re relieved to just be the prince instead of an aberration with godly time-warping powers, having to go through Mom or Dad for your allowance is not one of them. You sigh so that she’ll know how very put-upon you are, and that you’re deliberately choosing to be Mature when you say _“Okay,_ Mom.”

She chuckles and ruffles your bangs when she gives you your phone back. “You are very good, my son.”

 

 

You do your best to not get really excited over the arrival of the mail every day, and Frisk keeps going over to Dad’s for their mystery project, and Chara is visibly suspicious of the two of you but is very obviously refraining from asking. Your presents don’t arrive until the sixth day of Hanukkah, and you have to wait until Chara and Frisk are both busy to actually package them, leaving them in your mom’s care so that your friends won’t stumble over them in case you can’t think of a really good hiding place.

The afternoon of the final day, Frisk returns from your dad’s place with a round blue tin under their arm and a big smile on their face. Your parents exchange brief greetings and part ways, which hurts you to see—at least they aren’t fighting any longer, but it’s so far away from even _friendship,_ let alone the warm family they used to be.

Not wanting to watch them, you follow Frisk into the kitchen, where they set the tin in the middle of the table and tell you and Chara _don’t open it until after dinner_ with a very smug smile.

Mom gets the packages down from where they’d been hidden in her sock drawer or something and sets them alongside it. Chara leans over and spies their and Frisk’s names straight away.

“So _this_ is what you’ve been up to the whole time,” they say, looking up at you without really turning their head. “You should have said something! I’m the only one who didn’t get either of you anything.”

“It’s fine,” you say, blushing, flapping your hand. “Besides, all this is really only out of spite. If daily life is gonna try so hard to make the end of the year suck, we’ve gotta do our best to fight back.”

 _And mine is for everybody anyway,_ Frisk adds in. _Asriel is the only one who got actual presents all special._

The candle-lighting ritual and dinner seem to go by in a blink, Frisk fidgety and Chara avoiding looking straight at the fire and you hardly even tasting your food.

 _Me first,_ Frisk says, _because mine is also dessert._ And they pop the lid off the tin, proudly displaying that it’s stuffed full of what look like giant donut holes dusted in powdered sugar.

Chara yells a little, vibrating. “You actually _made_ sufganiyot?”

Frisk puffs their chest out. _I had to do it at Dad’s because we don’t have a deep fryer here. There are all kinds of different fillings, so see what you can find!_

“I think we shall put a limit on three for each of you every day,” your mother cautions from the sink. “But I am very proud of your progress, Frisk. It must have taken a great deal of practice to master a new recipe so quickly.”

“I’ve never even gotten to have this before,” says Chara, still staring at the deep-fried donuts, so enraptured that they almost seem to have forgotten your presents. (You see their eyes flick down to them just in time to cut yourself off from sulking.) Their hand reaches out and then stops, as if they’re afraid to actually take a donut, like they’re waiting for you or Frisk to snatch the tin away and say that it was all just an elaborate prank, so sorry, isn’t that funny how they actually thought they were _allowed._

So instead you hold very still while Chara watches first you, then Frisk from the corner of their eyes, until they decide to risk taking one after all.

They start eating it instantly like they’re still afraid someone’s going to steal it or yell, so you pick out one of your own and pretend not to see as you bite into it. You instantly regret the size of your bite—your pick was filled with marmalade jelly, so sweet it makes your eyes water. You close your eyes tight, chew, swallow, and go more slowly so that the intensity of the flavor won’t overwhelm you.

Frisk nibbles a donut of their own, looking from you to Chara and back again with that same big smile. They wait until they’re done and wipe their fingers on a napkin before asking _So how are they?_

“Good,” you tell them dutifully. Chara is already grabbing another, which you guess must be answer enough, because Frisk laughs.

Your next two donuts _(sufganiyot,_ Chara will correct you later) are filled with blueberry jam, then custard. Chara doesn’t take more than their fair share, but they sit and carefully clean their hands of sugar and stare at you and Frisk and the tin with an almost calculating expression.

“Yes, you can open it,” you say, grinning, as you dust your hands off. Chara has snatched their package off the table before Frisk even puts the lid back over dessert.

You gather your legs up underneath you on the seat of the chair even though your mom keeps telling you not to do that, and hold on to your legs and grin while your friends unwrap the little boxes. Chara gets the paper off theirs first, but curiously, they don’t open it yet; they put the wrapping paper in a neat pile on their placemat and hold the box between their hands and stare at Frisk and wait, like they’re holding their breath.

Frisk turns to look at Chara once they’re ready too, and in a movement so perfectly synchronized that you forget to breathe, they both open their boxes as one.

Pale light plays across their faces, reflected from the overhead lights of the room. Chara’s eyes are wide and unblinking; Frisk gasps a little.

They tear their eyes away from their presents to look at one another, and you swallow and knead your thighs, waiting.

Frisk takes the little star on its chain out of the box first, holding it up to admire before they undo the clasp and put it on. Chara follows, not even bothering to take off their locket first, so that the star with its six points sits just under their collarbones and the heart several inches underneath it, on their chest.

You got them in matching designs but different colors—bright gold for Chara, pale and almost silvery for Frisk, thinking about the colors that they each like to wear.

 _I love this,_ Frisk announces, pausing to play with their pendant a little before getting up. _I’m going to go see how this looks._ And off they go to the downstairs bathroom, their steps light.

“You’re coming too,” Chara says, bossy and blunt, and you nearly trip over your own feet when they grab your wrist and haul you along.

There’s only just enough room in front of the mirror for the three of you to fit with your shoulders squished together, and you look at the reflections of your eyes against the painting your mother hung on the far wall and the soft spring green walls. Blue, red, brown. Now that Frisk’s got their pendant on, there’s jewelry around every single one of your necks, proud and glittering in the vanity lights.

 _These are traditional presents for when kids come of age,_ Frisk tells you. The signs are a little hard to make out in the mirror, so you turn your head to watch them instead. _I can’t believe you knew._

“I didn’t, really,” you reply honestly, though you want to puff up and bask in their praise. “I just did some looking around and wanted to get you guys something really nice.”

“It _is_ nice,” Chara says. “Thank you. Both of you.”

In the mirror their face looks a little redder than it usually does, and their tongue flips briefly over their mouth and they take a deep breath. They turn to face you, put a hand on your shoulder, and they start to lean in close, so close you go cross-eyed trying to focus on them—

Their mouth, when it presses briefly against yours, is very soft. Something low in your belly does a flip, and there’s a rush of warmth there at the same time that leaves you feeling tingly and restless.

Chara pulls away.

They whirl to face Frisk, who’s staring at you with eyebrows upraised, and does exactly the same to them—the quick lean in, lips against lips, this time with a very soft sound, maybe because it’s skin on skin directly instead of skin on fur like with you.

Your insides do the exact same flip and warm rush, but this time heat crawls all the way up to your ears.

Chara steps back from Frisk, too, so that they’re an equal distance between you. Their face is brighter red than you’ve ever seen it before.

“You didn’t—” you try, and then swallow and try again. The sensation of their kiss lingers, distracting you and derailing your train of thought. They’ve never done something like _this_ before. That was your first kiss, and you were too surprised to even notice what it tasted like—not that you thought all those love stories could _really_ be true, the way they talk about strawberries. Oh gosh. “I-I, we told you it’s fine, that you didn’t have to do anything for us—”

“I didn’t do that because I felt _obligated,”_ they interrupt, staring straight at you.

“Then—why—” you sputter, sure that steam is about to start rising from your ears like one of Alphys’ cartoons.

“Spite,” Chara says, a little loudly, and they duck their head and push past you into the hall in a flounce of dark red hair.

Next to you, Frisk begins to giggle and doesn’t stop.


End file.
